She's fucking useless. All of the judges are, especially Alex James, who I used to quite like, but as soon as something that isn't 'indie' comes on he doesn't know what the fuck is going on. The best judge I've seen on there was, amazingly, Lethal Bizzle, who was guest judging once, and he was genuinely really insightful and considered all genres. It should just be him judging and be called Lethal Bizzle Rates Your Band. I'd go on that.

and where they ideally want to take them. Simon on there keeps mentioning that the band needs to have a hit single and he's hoping the band will go on to have a platinum album, in essence he's hoping to find the next Razorlight, Kings Of Leon, Dido from taking part in it. Bnads that people on this forum will classify as 'good' don't normally achieve anywhere near those have those kind of sales and are usually a lot more DIY spirited.

Instead they'll be playing dingy London pubs, putting a 7" inch out on a small singles label and have a good manager on board who will know that by taking part in something like Unsigned Act they'll be forfeiting their credibility, the media and a lot of normal people will form an opinion before hearing a single note, those people will be very hard to win round after, plus no other label will take a look at them as they'll be regarded as 'damaged goods'. Enter and win and you're cursed by it, lose and you still have that nose hanging round your neck.

We talk about Envy & Other Sins and consider that the 'wrong' band might have won, but E&OS you can at least imagine might have sold some records had they got a consistent push, but then Revenue might have been an easier sell at the start of 2008 but their type were being pilloried from all quarters by the end of the year. (And there's the fact E&OS won just before Christmas and the single didn't come out for about four months so the target audience had forgotten). Why did This City enter the first series, even if they did pull out very early on? Why did a really interesting but commercially unsellable young local band make my heart sink with their Myspace bulletins urging us to vote for them in the initial stages (they didn't get through)? At least if, as it looks, the winner is in no way credible as we'd understand it there'd be no pretence that they're invading our territory.

they'll have had come up against so many walls that entering is the final push to 'make it'.
Agree with you on E&OS, they had some good songs but there downfall was not being right for the label longterm, they'll have been better off with someone who had more modest expectations and who would be content with sales of around 20,000. With some labels it is all about turning a large profit around in a very short amount of time, the bottom line rides high while art plays very low down on their list of priorities.